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Egypt’s minister of foreign affairs does not believe France’s deployment of troops to Chad, where hundreds of thousands have sought refuge from violence in neighbouring Sudan, foreshadows military intervention in the region. Egypt and other Arabs have looked with suspicion on Western moves regarding Sudan.
A runaway killer on Saturday brought terror to one of Rome’s most popular tourist spots before being fatally wounded in a shoot-out that brought a mother close to being killed in front of her children. Luciano Liboni, nicknamed ”The Wolf”, had been Italy’s most wanted man since murdering an officer of the paramilitary Carabinieri.
According to Mustafa Yusuf, a youth who was recruited to the Janjaweed in Sudan’s Darfur region, but deserted, the militiamen had been roused for battle with songs and speeches that declared all black civilians to be their enemies. Yusuf offers a rare insight into the militias responsible for a campaign of brutal ethnic cleansing.
Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa has urged for increased efforts in the fight against malaria, saying that in Tanzania, as in many other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the disease is killing more people than HIV/Aids does. ”With 100 000 malaria-related deaths every year, Tanzania is leading in such deaths,” he said.
In a move to increases South Africa’s protected areas, Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk has proclaimed more than 66 480ha of new land to be incorporated into the country’s national parks system. Three of the areas affected by the expansion fall within the Cape Floristic Kingdom.
Zimbabwe police on Saturday searched the Harare home of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai for ”weapons of war”, his spokesperson said. ”They found nothing. They searched his four-bedroom house. They went literally into every room,” William Bango said. He could not confirm if the police had a search warrant.
Jazz legend Sipho Gumede, who died on Monday after a battle with lung cancer, was laid to rest in Durban on Saturday, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported. Kwazulu-Natal Premier Sibusiso Ndebele announced the establishment of a music academy as a tribute to Gumede, the report said.
The construction of the first railway line in Kenya was a feast for ”Tsavo’s man-eaters” as the lions in the area were named. The hungry beasts tore about 130 workers to pieces. Nearly 100 years later, a German company is tackling the reconstruction of the old route, which is to be extended to southern Sudan.
A car bomb exploded outside a police station in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Sunday, killing at least five people and injuring 53 others, police said. The blast followed a night of clashes between United States troops and insurgents that left 10 dead and 27 wounded in the troubled city of Fallujah, west of the capital.